Drawing attention to tutor/mentor programs

When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 our goal was to build an information base consisting of "all that was known" of volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region. This led to building a list of Chicago area programs that we initially published in a printed Directory (1994-2003), then an on-line Directory (2004-2018) and that we used to invite programs to gather and share ideas through May and November conferences that we hosted in Chicago (1994-2015). It's still available on this page of our website. 

As I wrote in last week's post, the www.tutormentorexchange.net site has been reconfigured after being moved to a new server.  That results in a revised look and feel. But it also meant that I've had to fix a lot of broken links and formatting problems.

Yesterday I updated all the links on the "In the News" page shown in the two graphics posted below.  These are media stories generated through the strategy we launched in 1993.

This page has a long list of stories.  Included is a link to an archive, that shows additional stories, including those that focused more on the Cabrini Connections part of our local-global strategy. 

This media strategy was Step 2 in a 4-part strategy developed in 1993. It's visualized on this concept map.

It's important to keep in mind that when we formed a new organization in late 1992 our first goal was to create a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program that would continued support to 7th graders who had aged out of the program hosted at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago (which I led from 1975 to October 1992) to help them move through high school.   We named that Cabrini Connections. As we launched that strategy in  January 1993 we were also in the beginning stages of building the second strategy, which became the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Thus, over the 19 years that I led this two part strategy our first priority was always what we called the "Kids' Connection".  This map shows our location in the Near North part of Chicago and the location of other tutor, mentor and learning programs in other high poverty areas of Chicago.

We created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to draw needed resources to EVERY other program in Chicago as a strategy to help draw more of these same resources to OUR OWN program.  The information that has been archived in the Tutor/Mentor library was first intended to support the volunteers, students, leaders and donors of our own program. 

The media stories shown on the "In the News" page and the archive show how successful this strategy was despite having consistent challenges caused by the loss of our major supporter, Montgomery Ward, in 2000, then the economic downturns of the 9/11/2001 attack, and the financial collapse of 2008-10, which led to the split in mid 2011 which led to me forming the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to keep the T/MC available in Chicago and help similar efforts grow in other cities.  

In most of the articles posted on this blog I've encouraged programs in Chicago and in other cities to embrace a "Tutor/Mentor Connection" type strategy and for universities to lead it.  Doing so can draw more support to your own organization, while helping your city fill all high poverty areas with needed youth serving programs.

I hope you'll take time to look at these media stories.  If you can find a similar list of stories created by anyone in your own community, over such a long period of time, please share it.

If not, then why not put together a team and duplicate it. The problems are still with us, and may grow more severe in the coming months and years.  

Share you thoughts and resources with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram and other sites.  See links to my social media on this page.

If you want to recognize, or reward, or support my efforts, please visit this page and make a contribution to help me keep doing this work.

Thank you for reading.  Good luck to you.

Using Research in Planning, Problem-Solving

Last week A Better Chicago released a new report titled "State of Chicago Youth, 2025". I wrote about it in this article. 

I’ve been collecting similar information for over 30 years, showing where people need extra help, why, and what type of help could be offered to youth via organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

And, I’ve been pointing to that research in articles on this blog. I’m sharing a few below. I hope you’ll open the links and take a look, then share the ideas through your own blogs, videos, etc.

Here’s an article where I use maps to show where people need extra help.

It’s one of dozens where I show the four-part, information-based problem-solving strategy that I’ve piloted since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011. It’s one where I point to a section of my library with hundreds of links to articles and research about poverty, racism, inequality and social justice. And, it’s one where I encourage others to share this information in their network, so more people find it and use it.

When I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection the goal was to help every existing tutor/mentor program in the Chicago region get the operating resources, volunteers and ideas each program needs to grow. Here’s one of many articles that focus on the challenges of finding on-going funding for mentor-based programs.

My leadership of a single volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 1992 and a second program starting in 1993, along with my career in retail advertising with the Montgomery Ward corporation, provided the foundation ideas for the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

These experiences led me to understand that organized volunteer-based programs were a way to connect kids in high poverty areas to people, experiences and opportunities that were not readily available in their own family/neighborhoods, due to extreme poverty. Over time, I began to understand this as a form of ‘bridging social capital’ and visualized it in graphics like the one shown below.

Here’s one of many articles where I write about mentoring as a form of social capital.

In my work at Montgomery Ward’s corporate headquarters, from 1973 to 1990, I learned how my department, and other functional teams, supported more than 400 retail stores spread in 40 states. We helped each store be good at attracting customers, selling merchandise and earning a profit. (at least we tried)

Thus, when we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection plan in 1993 our initial strategy was to learn what programs existed in Chicago, then to build a public awareness strategy that would attract more attention, volunteers and donors to each program, and to every high poverty neighborhood.

This article shows how we began publishing a Directory of programs in 1994 and how this information was used to support programs.

In this article I describe an on-going information-based planning process, that uses information like I’ve been collecting.

This could be led from institutions who have deep roots in geographic areas, like hospitals, universities, businesses, etc.

To do this research, someone needs to host a library like mine, with lists and directories of youth serving programs, then use that information in an on-going planning, program development and public education and resource generation strategy.

This is a missing step in most of the research I’ve seen for over 25 years. Researchers get the money to do the research and produce a report, with a big event that shares it with the public, but then don't have the money to continue to share that research and draw people together to use it over the following years.  What I do is aggregate links to that research and try to motivate people to use it to support youth tutor/mentor and learning programs in every high poverty area of cities like Chicago.

Over the past 30 years I've piloted actions that I share on my website and that anyone can borrow and apply in their own geographic area.

While I do find a few who host lists of youth serving programs, and even plot the list on interactive maps, I don’t find any with multi-year public awareness efforts aimed at drawing volunteers and donors to every youth-serving program within their city.  If you know of any who do this, please share the link and I'll add them to my library.

Furthermore, I don’t find any doing the deeper research asking “what youth programs exist in your area”.

Doing such research and maintaining a list of programs is a big job, especially in cities as large as Chicago. That’s why, for many years, I’ve tried to motivate universities to build a Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategy on their campus. This is one of several articles where I share this invitation. 

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

Here’s an article where I show 30 years of effort to build strategic alliances with universities. You can see a wide range of interactions with many universities, but no long-term initiative led by, and funded by, any university.

Why wasn’t I successful? Money. Reputation. Clout.

I never had much of any of these so when I met with someone at a university, I’d receive polite nods, with a “I’m already over extended. Find a younger professor.”

 The answer: ultra wealthy donors

Here's one of several articles where I show the potential of strategic investment by one or more wealthy donors.  Here's another. 

How might we find such donors? 

They are all around us. Do you watch NFL football games? How often do you hear players praised for their philanthropic work? I posted this on Twitter in 2024 sharing the idea from this post.

What if a university aggregated this information and then used it to recruit a group of athletes who support the same cause, to support a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy at the university that was building the database of athlete involvement?

What if? What if? What if?

What if you share this article in your networks? Maybe someone will read it and adopt the idea and actually take the next steps.

That’s why I write these articles.

If you're connected to a university, or looking to put your name on a building at your alma mater, I hope you'll make this your mission.

Thanks for reading.  There's a lot here, so bookmark the page and return often.  Then, look me up on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and let's connect.  If you're writing similar articles, which I hope you will, please share them.

Finally, if you're able, please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund my work. 

Building Attention for Youth Tutor/Mentor Programs - Strategy

In January 2019 I wrote an article titled "What the Heck Am I Trying to Do?" The graphic below is one of many that visualize the goal of drawing attention, ideas and resources to every volunteer-based youth serving organization in Chicago.  I've been trying to do this since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.

There are dozens of articles on this blog that share this strategy, and that encourage leaders in every big city with areas of concentrated poverty, to adopt it.  We launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection in January 1994 (after a year of planning), with the four-part strategy that I show with the concept map below.

While Step 1 of the strategy focuses on collecting information that can be used to build understanding and find better ways to help youth in high poverty areas connect with extra adults who help them move through school and into work, Step 2 focuses on public awareness, needed to get people to look at the information in Step 1.

While I've described the public awareness strategy in many ways, I realized today that I seldom shared the concept map that shows this strategy.  Take a look. 

This strategy is based on my 17 years working in retail advertising with the Montgomery Ward Corporation, between 1973 and 1990.  Every year we spent millions of dollars on weekly print, TV and radio ads intended to draw shoppers to the 400+ stores we had in 40 different states.  Every month our ads had different themes, timed to what customers were thinking about. So in August we had Back-to-School themes, while in May we had Mother's Day and Graduation themes. Obviously in December we had Christmas and Holiday gift-giving themes.  

So the T/MC built events that were timed to the rhythm of tutor/mentor programs. In August we focused on volunteer and student recruitment.  In November we drew programs together to share ideas while at the same time built awareness of the need for dollars to support every tutor/mentor program in Chicago, with the goal of influencing year-end giving.

While we never were able to get a radio campaign off the ground in February when programs were beginning to look for new volunteers to replace those who dropped out over the holidays, we did build on the January National Mentoring Month attention.  In May we held a year-end conference, to celebrate work done during the year, share ideas, and point people to work needed to launch improved programs when the cycle begins to repeat in August of the next school  year.

Without many dollars for advertising or public relations our strategy aimed to generate media coverage of our events. Our social media and newsletters aimed to draw visitors to our website, library and lists of Chicago youth programs.  

Our goal has been to influence actions people take to help others get involved, to help youth tutor and/or mentor programs grow in more high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities. 

On this page you can see news stories that were the result of repeating these events every year. 

Graphics like the one at the right try to visualize these ideas. You can see it in this article, and, in this article, you can see how interns shared it with their own projects. 

Another graphic that I've used often is the one below, emphasizing the 12 years it take for youth to move through school and the additional years it takes to get into a job and a career.  Kids who have a diverse network of adult support have better opportunities than those who don't.  Living in high poverty areas reduces the reach of your network. Being part of organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs can help expand networks of support.

Through all of this I've tried to motivate other people to use their own media and celebrity status to draw people in their own network to this information.  

I'm still doing that. If you share this article, you're taking that role. 

Thank you for reading. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon and other sites. Let's connect. See links on this page.

If you can help out with a contribution, visit my FundT/MI page, and use PayPal to send some help.